Gun control might not have been the biggest issue in the 2024 election, but it wasn't exactly a non-issue, either. Trump had the backing of pretty much every gun rights group in the nation while Harris tried to position herself as a gun owner and somehow convince people that she could be trusted with the right to keep and bear arms even as she advocated for infringing on that right.
And the gun groups on both sides of the debate spent money to drive votes toward their preferred candidate. It didn't work the way some claim it does.
After all, we often hear that spending is what drives votes. If you spend more, you win. While money can obviously help get one's message out, can it really change who people back if you spend more than the other side? On the issue of guns, at least, it clearly didn't.
Stephen Gutowski at The Reload took a look and found some interesting facts.
The major gun groups that spent big money in those federal races faired very differently, with the National Rifle Association (NRA) outperforming the gun-control groups despite being outraised and outspent.
The NRA’s biggest bets almost all paid off. It went eight for ten in the races where its Political Action Committee spent the most money, with Michigan Republican Mike Rogers losing his Senate race and Arizona’s Kari Lake currently behind in her Senate bid. However, the group’s success rate dropped to nine for 18 with two uncalled contests in races where the NRA spent more than $50,000–including NRA-backed Gabe Evans, who currently trails Democrat Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s only remaining uncalled House race.
“NRA members and gun owners across the country made their voices heard this election cycle by delivering a pro-gun majority in the U.S. Senate,” the NRA posted on Thursday. “Our votes matter!”
Everytown for Gun Safety’s Super PAC performed noticeably worse in its top ten races, but with more uncalled contests that could still go either way. Four of the races it spent most in have gone it’s way so far, three have gone against it, and the other three are all California House races that no outlet has called yet. Everytown’s success rate jumps a bit, adding two wins and the uncalled race in California’s 45th District, when looking at races where it spent more than $50,000.
“Tuesday night was devastating,” Angela Ferrell-Zabala, Everytown’s Senior Vice President of Movement Building, told supporters in a Thursday fundraising message vowing to continue fighting Trump. “Make no mistake: Trump’s extremist agenda is a danger to our nation. The next four years will not only bring significant challenges for our gun safety movement, but will undoubtedly put the freedoms of our communities—particularly Black and brown people, women, and LGBTQ+ folks—directly at risk.”
Giffords PAC spending is more straightforward than the rest. It only made outside expenditures in eight races, all of them over $235,000, and ended up on the wrong side of six of them so far. It hasn’t notched a single win yet, but it has spent a combined $2,234,654 trying to flip two Republican House seats that are still uncalled.
Now, keep in mind that a lot of people on the right take issue with how people use money to drive elections. They routinely claim that spending in elections somehow negatively impacts democracy and other horrible things.
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Further, let's remember that polling tends to show that there's supposed to be broad support for gun control in general, which means the anti-gun groups' spending should have been more beneficial than, say, the NRA's.
Only, it wasn't.
First, there's reason to question the validity of the polling in the first place, in part because even if people support gun control, it's usually not the issue driving their vote, so it tends to be kind of irrelevant. Further, there are other questions with the polls seemingly a bit wonky in the presidential election. If they're that wrong on that race, what else are they wrong about?
Then there's the fact that all spending does is put your message before people. It doesn't necessarily sway people. At best, you're going to convince some undecideds, but even that is a crap shoot.
Personally, I love that they squandered their money for no return. That's less they have to use elsewhere to try and infringe on people's rights, but I also enjoy how it undermines much of their narrative about spending in elections.
